Science Fair Project

[onyk]

I'm going to be doing a science fair project in which I test the effectiveness of various windows registry cleaners on improving a computer's performance. Since I'm using a computer that's about seven years old and has experienced a TON of use, I expect to be able to see the effect of the cleaners pretty easily.

Anyway, the reason I've come to this forum to talk about this is this: I don't know what aspect of the computer's performance is actually altered by the cleaners, other than the fact that they will fix errors in the registry. Will I see a change in the amount of processes/cpu usage? The physical memory? The kernel memory? I understand that in asking this question I will look like a computer noob, which I am for the most part. But I don't really care, I just need to know the answer so I can create a hypothesis and begin my project.

Please answer soon!

-Onyk

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

"Registry cleaners" are not doing anything to improve Windows performance. They also do not "repair" registry errors.

All they usually do is remove unused registry entries, or what their developers think are unused entries.

Erroneously removing "unused" registry entries may leave you with non-functioning software, or even non-functioning Windows.

I really, really don't know why some people think that the Windows registry needs "cleaning".

[Gandalph]

I have to agree with Pat. There is no sense in cleaning out the Registry, and as Pat mentioned it could leave you with non-functioning software.

As for any increase in speed; you may see a slight difference in access time but I would imagine it to be so slight that you probably wouldn't notice it anyway.